The Many Lives of Dorothy Nyswander

One of the world's pioneers in health education reached her 100th
birthday last month, and her secret for a long, productive life has nothing to
do with diet or exercise.

"Just enjoy life, dear. Have as much fun as you can and love people."

Such advice may have been expressed before, but few have lived it with more
success than Dorothy Nyswander, whose centennial birthday on Sept. 29 brought
some 150 former students, colleagues, and admirers to Berkeley from the four
corners of the globe.

They came to honor a woman frequently called the "mother of health education,"
whose phenomenal vitality has made her a legend in her field.

At the age of 10, she wanted to be a philosopher.

At 20, with her new husband, she walked over the snowy Sierra Nevada from
her home in Antelope Valley to Yosemite, happily carrying a five-pound bag of
potatoes for food and a homemade sleeping bag.

At 32, she earned a PhD in psychology from Berkeley while, as a single mother,
she cared for a small daughter.

At 40, she conducted a landmark study of school health that affected the lives
of one million children in New York City.

At 50, she helped establish the School of Public Health here, one of three
founders who built the school.

At 63, she taught the people of Jamaica how to teach themselves to control
malaria.

At 70, she slept on the cement floor of a rural health center in India, with
her rolled-up clothes for a pillow, and talked to the men and women about
family planning.

At 99, she gave a speech to her profession, the Society of Public Health
Educators, and moved the audience to tears.

The highlights from Nyswander's life only touch the surface of her
productivity, which includes wartime service with the Federal Works Agency,
where she set up government-sponsored nursery schools for the children of women
who made the airplanes and ships of World War II.

"It was a wonderful, wonderful sight, to walk into an airplane factory and see
women with their arms in oil, oiling the machinery just as through they were
kneading bread," she recalled.

Nyswander has lost her sight in recent years, and she gets around with more
difficulty now, but her mind is crystal bright and her spirit captivates almost
everyone who has ever known her.

A few months ago, she completed a 250-page oral history for the the Bancroft
Library that tells the story of her life from growing up on a ranch in Mono
County in stagecoach-era California to her international work with the World
Health Organization.

Of the many stories that could be told about Nyswander's life, one of the most
interesting is a paradox: in spite of her great age, she is a most modern
woman.

In 1906, when she was only 12, Nyswander experimented with Hindu theories of
reincarnation.

She would sit by newly made graves in the cemetery at dusk waiting for the
spirits to rise. They never did. "I don't know where they went, those
spirits," she said.

With a growing commitment to experimental science, Nyswander put religion on
the back shelf of her mind and took a college degree in mathematics, followed
by a doctorate in psychology. But pure research and logical analysis were never
enough for this humanistic individual, and during the years of World War II,
Nyswander encountered a new philosophy that was then called "group dynamics,"
the process of empowering people to solve their own problems.

The principles of participatory learning collided with Nyswander's identity as
"the expert," and at first she was angry.

"I said to myself, what good is it being an expert? What good is it having a
PhD if you can't use it?" But within days she had abandoned the expert's
role and adopted wholeheartedly Lewin's theories of learning. They would guide
her for the next half century in health programs throughout the globe.

"I think this whole problem of bringing about change, change from anything, is
a matter of getting commitment. The inner person has to become committed to
it, in some way. And you don't become an advocate unless you participate in the
process," said Nyswander.

In 1957, Nyswander retired from Berkeley at age 62. She began a new career
with the World Health Organization, traveling to Jamaica, Turkey, Brazil, the
South Seas, and India. If she had the time, she said, she would begin still
another career, in politics.

"I would have liked to be in politics," said Nyswander. "But you don't get to
do everything you want in this life." And what would she focus on in politics,
Nyswander was asked?

"Childcare," she said. "It isn't as good now as during the war when we had
government nurseries."